My heart drops when I see Zach on the hood of the cop car. Officer Hanks is patting him down.
“What the hell is going on here?!” I scream, running toward them.
“Stop right there!” Officer Hanks says. “We’ve been informed that this man was present at a party where there were underaged teenagers earlier this week.”
My blood runs cold. The damn Malek party.
“Dad,” I say, pinching the skin of my throat. “You can’t be serious, can you? Really? You have no proof that he was there.”
“You were there,” my dad says. “So he was there, too.”
I try to calm myself.
“You can’t prove that, anyway,” I say.
Lisa appears at the door, and I pull my dad over to the side of the front yard, out of earshot of the rest.
“Dad, why are you doing this?”
Putting his hands on his hips, he glances to either side of me but refuses to look me in the eye. “Your stepmom. She’s worried about you going out with this Zach character. Let alone going on a trip with him to some city eight hours away.”
I hold back the tears welling behind my eyes. I do my best to stay strong. I touch his arm.
“But, Dad, what do you think? Do you trust me? Do you trust your daughter’s judgment?”
He swallows, his gaze still flitting about the lawn. “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
“Believe me. I’ll be fine. I’m twenty-three. If you can’t trust me now, what are you going to do, baby me forever? I’m an adult. And I’m not happy here. You know that.”
“It’s just a little sudden, Harmony. Can’t you stay a while, think this trip over?”
“The truth, Dad, is that this trip has been bubbling up inside me for months. It’s just the time now.”
I jump when I feel my stepmom’s hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t you let her change your mind,” she says to my dad. “A trip on a motorcycle with a guy like that?” She gestures at Zach. “Buying booze for underage kids. What a piece of work.”
I scoff at my dad’s inability to stand up for himself—and at Lisa for her control over him.
Glancing at Officer Hanks, who has Zach cuffed on the hood of the car, I make my move.
“All right, then, arrest me! I was at the party too!” I yell, walking toward Officer Hanks with my wrists facing out. “You’re only doing this because my stepmom told you to, right?”
Officer Hanks furrows his brow. “Your dad told me to do this.”
“Well, then,” I say. “Cuff me, please. I was drinking and playing beer pong with twenty-year-olds. Because we all know that’s a horrible crime that is tearing this town apart. Really killing the fabric of this community. I bought all the booze for the party and handed it out to everyone!”
Zach glances at me, his cheek on the hood of the car. “You don’t have to do this. Just forget it. It’s just the way it is sometimes.”
“Oh, but I do! Serve up some justice, Officer Hanks, come on!” I bait.
Officer Hanks is Cole’s cousin and a family friend of my dad. He knows as well as we all do that bringing Zach in on this trumped-up charge of ‘allegedly drinking with minors’ is a charge that no one has been written up for here in decades. This is some bullshit, is what it is.
He glances at me and then shifts his gaze to my stepmom and finally to my dad.
“Take her. Take them both!” my stepmom barks out, taking hold of my dad’s arm. “We need to teach them a lesson.”
He looks at me, then back at her, and then at Officer Hanks.
“Let them both go.”
Officer Hanks arches an eyebrow. “You sure?”
“Yes,” my dad says.
Lisa retracts her arm, shakes her head, and stomps inside as Officer Hanks undoes Zach’s cuffs.
I shake my head at the ridiculousness of the kangaroo court I just witnessed.
Only in Blackwell.
Handing my bag to Zach, I run over to my dad and hug him.
“Love you, Dad,” I whisper.
“Love you too,” he says.
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“That’s impossible,” he says into my ear. “I mean, the worrying about you part. You will be fine though. You call me and tell me you’re all right when you get there.”
“I trust him. I do,” I say, nodding toward Zach.
He looks at Zach, who’s firing up the motorcycle.
“And I trust you,” he says.
My heart gushes with warmth hearing him say that.
I kiss Dad on the cheek, get on the back of Zach’s motorcycle.
“Everything cool?” he asks.
“Oh yeah. We’re fine.”
“Well, glad I could meet your parents,” he jokes as we hit the open road.
Chapter 18
Harmony
“How are you doing?” Zach asks when we stop at the station in town to gas up.
I nod. “Fine.”
Putting a hand on my hip, he steps closer to me.
“Don’t lie to me, Vanderbilt.”
“Okay, I’m not,” I admit, a little relieved that he sees through my charade. Zach steadies his gaze on me.
“But you’re tougher than you think. I knew that the moment I saw you.”
As much as I want to believe him, my stomach feels like a dull knife is twisting into it.
We both head inside the gas station, and I use the restroom.
Zach is smiling when I come out. He’s holding a gaudy, pink leather jacket.
I squint at him. “You can’t be serious.”
He laughs. “But pink is so your color.”
“This isn’t what I had in mind when we talked about a shopping spree.”
“I know. But your cute little skin is going to get sunburned driving across the country on a day like today. This will get us to Nashville. Then we’ll stop somewhere for your spree.”
I giggle, trying the jacket on.
He pulls me close for a surprise kiss. “Either way, you look damn hot in it.”
The fuel tank is filled to the brim.
Although my stepmom’s worries were clearly overblown, a host of questions creep into my mind as we pull onto the main highway.
Where will we stay?
Who is this friend of his?
What if my stepmom was right—what if I fail and have to come back to Blackwell again, tail between my legs, and beg to stay rent-free?
With my arms settled around Zach’s waist, I close my eyes and feel the wind on my face through my helmet. I take a few slow and easy breaths, letting my muscles loosen. It’s an odd sort of therapeutic feeling, being pressed up against a man like Zach. Strong but gentle, and still a total enigma to me.
Our connection is undeniable. But part of my brain—the logical, overtrained, and overcautious part of my mind—doubts what I’m doing. That logical part of me sounds too much like my stepmom, though. So I ignore it. Obviously, I’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring Lisa over the years.
Deep in my gut, I know it’s not a mistake to take this risk with Zach. Even if he is quiet and mysterious sometimes. Even if his past is checkered. I rub Zach lightly on his arm, and he turns slightly to acknowledge me.